I wrote last year that “Blade” was getting another rewrite. It turned out that Nic Pizzolatto was out and had been replaced by Michael Green, the writer of “Logan.” Hopefully, Green gets it right this time, since he’s now the sixth writer hired by Marvel boss Kevin Feige to pen the “Blade” reboot.
The film’s intended release date also keeps changing. “Blade” was originally supposed to come out in November 2023, then it got delayed to September 2024 and now the official date seems to be February 14th, 2025.
We now have an update from Jeff Sneider who is saying that the film will most likely be delayed to 2026. It was a given that this would happen since the film hasn’t even started production yet.
According to a report from Variety, “Blade” star Mahershala Ali was ready to exit the film over these script issues. In one of the versions of the script, Blade was reportedly relegated to the fourth lead of the movie, and Ali was obviously not going to take part in that. However, Sneider is saying that Ali seems to be happy with Green’s new draft of the script.
Feige’s hiring of Green has made the film finally move forward, we think, and, since the last few MCU movies have had ridiculously inflated budgets, we’re hearing that ‘Blade’ will be shot with a budget of less than $100M and rated R.
This project has been around for five years now. Back in 2019, at San Diego’s ComicCon, Marvel had announced Ali as the next Blade. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic hit shortly after that and the film’s development took a few steps back.
Back in April, “True Detective” creator/writer Nic Pizzolatto was tapped to pen the latest round of rewrites. He was the fifth writer to officially take on the “Blade” reboot after Stacy Osei-Kuffour, Michael Starrbury and Beau DeMayo took a crack at the script.
A few months ago, French filmmaker Yann Demange (“71,” “White Boy Rick”) was hired to replace Bassam Tariq as ‘Blade’ director. Mia Goth was also added to the cast alongside Delroy Lindo and Aaron Pierre. On-paper, the project sounds like one of the more interesting MCU films in recent years.